Boeing plans to move more engineering operations from the Puget Sound area of Washington state to Long Beach.

In a memo Thursday to affected Washington employees, Boeing’s commercial aircraft business said it decided to “place the majority” of its engineering work for commercial aircraft modifications and freighter conversions in Long Beach.

Currently, 375 people do that work in Puget Sound, with another 125 already in Long Beach.

The move will include engineering and support functions, Boeing spokesman Jim Condelles said in an email.

It was unclear how many jobs would be moved to Long Beach or how many Puget Sound jobs would be lost.

“It’s not a one-for-one placement of jobs, but rather the location of the work performed by these teams will transition to Boeing’s Long Beach facilities,” Condelles said.

The move will start in the second half of this year and be completed over the next 18 months.

Other shifts of work could follow Thursday’s announcement.

“The extended Freighter Conversions team already has a major presence in Long Beach, and we will continue to evaluate other specific opportunities in Southern California to determine what is best for our business,” said Tim Copes, vice president of fleet services at Boeing’s Commercial Aviation Services, in the memo to employees.

Thursday’s announcement to employees came after Boeing said in May that it would move 300 jobs from Puget Sound to Long Beach as part of the establishment of a Southern California engineering design center. That move, expected to take six to nine months, consolidates service work on aircraft that are out of production.

“At that time, we also announced that Fleet Services was studying how the new design center could benefit our work in airplane modifications and freighter conversions,” Copes’ noted to employees in the memo.

Thursday’s announcement was a result of that study.

“This announcement is part of a larger Boeing Commercial Airplanes strategy to locate engineering functions in geographically diverse engineering design centers, including Southern California,” Condelles said. “We believe the airplane modification and freighter conversion programs will benefit from the Southern California design center as we create a center that can streamline processes and develop common practices to best support post-production airplanes.”

Boeing executive Dan da Silva will lead the newly combined Modifications and Freighter Conversions business. Craig Larson will continue to head the modifications business and will also lead the transition of operations to Long Beach, Boeing said.

Boeing’s commercial aircraft business currently employs about 1,200 workers in Southern California, split between Long Beach, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach. That number will grow “over time” rather than all at once, Condelles said.

The aerospace giant’s recent announcements on sending more work to Long Beach reverses a long trend of such jobs leaving the L.A. region.

In 1990, Los Angeles County had about 130,100 aerospace jobs. By 2012, that number had plummeted by more than two-thirds to 38,400.

The Cold War’s end, a slump in the satellite market and cheaper production costs in other parts of the country and world contributed to the declining local aerospace workforce.

However, if Boeing or other large aerospace companies start shifting more work to Southern California, that could also lead to additional jobs at the smaller companies that supply them.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.